"One to be born from a dragon..." -- Let's Play Final Fantasy II

I think it's fine for Mario RPGs. I don't want it in my Final Fantasy.

Brickroad was abused by a Timed Hit as a kid, you see. It brings back horrible memories for him.

He once pressed Circle too early during Tidus' Overdrive.

The blitzball came out of the screen and hit him in the figgins.

He's never been the same since.

Mr. Brickroad, Sir, why the sudden reaction? Please explain yourself.

I think I made myself quite clear, thank you.

Brick isn't good at video games.

Imagine how annoying random encounters would be if you had to time all of your presses. Mario RPGs display all of the enemies, so you can just avoid them, but in something like Final Fantasy you would be forced to actually concentrate instead of mashing A.

That's kind of a bad thing when you're just trying to get through a dungeon.

Brickroad knows about timed hits.

I suppose the trouble is that any little thing optional you can do to boost damage output will eventually become something the game's difficulty level assumes you're doing.... Which would be problematic except that we're not talking about putting it in a game that's exactly a meticulously-balanced economy challenge.

This man gets it.

I like it when RPGs let me just roll my eyes back for a few hours and play on autopilot. That's really the only way I can enjoy a 50+ hour game. Forcing me to be actively engaged in every single one of the hundreds and hundreds of random encounters is a very quick way to turn me off.

Mario RPGs get a free pass because they're easy and short (and fun), but I've never gone back to replay any of them.

yeah, that's exactly why i stopped playing mother 3, and generally avoid action games. there's something just relaxing about turn based systems.

ff13 required way too much energy and attention for me to enjoy at all in more than 10 minute long chunks.

I got through FF13 because, boss battles aside, you can clear all the encounters with a single Paradigm shift. Start out in something that slathers on the buffs, then switch to something that deals lots of damage.

Not a very efficient way to get through the game, but pretty relaxing nonetheless.

What's to stop you from just not trying to score timed hits?

Edit: Obviously this won't work if they're a major part of the battle system like in Mario & Luigi, but something after the style of Mario RPG where it's just a passive thing you can do would be so well-adapted to a Final Fantasy game that they actually did put it in VIII. In Glory of Heracles there was a setting in the options to disable the challenges, too; with them on, a spell could end up either stronger or weaker than the default, but with them off, it did the default every time and the animations were shorter to boot.

I have to admit, for a chunk of that game my favorite party was Lightning, Sahz and Hope just for the Double-Haste, Double-Rav 1-2 combo I could crush most random encounters with.

Nothing, I suppose.

Not that Mario RPGs get that hard, but eventually if you aren't at least dodging with timed hits you're going to have a much harder time.

See this?

This is Brick attempting to time his response, but just generally mashing the button and hoping for the best.

If this had been a dangerous situation, and not just a LP, and timed hits were involved he'd already be dead.

I've got to say, either I'm very good at the timed hits, or Brick's sense of autopilot is a lot more nuanced than mine, because I don't see any noticeable difference in the level of awareness or interactivity they require versus say responding quickly to a character's turn coming up in an ATB system. Maybe a smidge more, but certainly not enough to require constant active attention or anything.

I'm trying to work out whether this is sarcasm or not. There's pretty much nothing worse to me than an RPG pretty much just going "mindlessly mash A for half an hour to space out these boss fights and prolonged cut scenes." That's just wasting both our time right there.

I think that about sums it up.

We just derailed this thread into FF vs DQ. Let's not turn it into a debate about Action Commands.

It's hard. We're used to going twelve years between updates!

...you disagree with me, therefore I must have been being sarcastic?

How tolerant and open-minded of you!

No, you just had so much enthusiasm there it was potentially insincere. Plus, this is a thread where you're let's playing an RPG and pointing out all the incidental fights where you want to throw down black spells and how to optimize everyone's equipment and all, which further confuses the matter.

Yes, I'm trying to show off the range of possibility the game presents, the fun a modern player might have with it, and share my experiences learning it while growing up.

But I assure you, when I do a "normal" replay, I just hammer Attack and stockpile potions. That just doesn't make for a very entertaining LP. =)

Ehh, to be fair when I first saw you use the eyeball-rolling metaphor or whatever, I found it a pretty bizarre way to "enjoy" an RPG. I didn't think you were being sarcastic, but I didn't really get it at first.

Then I realized that's pretty much all I ever did in most of these games anyway, once I lost something like six hours suddenly to one. I certainly didn't spend all six of those hours thinking directly about the game... It entered some strange portion of my brain that I can only describe as the "non-conscience" after about an hour in. The five hours after that were all thoughts related to my writing, how I'd make a game, how I should be spending my time better, etc etc etc.

So I'm thinking if Google plays another RPG for a long session soon and takes note of what he actually thought about during that time, he may see things your way.

I never figured out the rhythm nonsense in Mother 3 but I beat it anyway. I'm not convinced it was ever actually there.

Guys the important thing here is that Final Fantasy II fucking rules and doesn't need any of this button pushing nonsense to be fun. Why can't the internet just enjoy video games.

I think all future FF Installments should have 3 difficulty levels (maybe a crazy hard 4th unlockable.)

They're are too many different FF factions to possibly please them all nowadays.

Not if it's just buffing stats out to absurd lengths, which is what that usually means.